The Sparrow Found A House (Sparrow Stories #1)

by Jason McIntire

  Chapter 25

  Scrabble, For The Glory Of God

  Though Columbia, Missouri was smaller than the city in which Katie Rivera had lived all her life, it seemed far bigger because her parents were not there. Staying in this fancy hotel with all these fancy people, it was hard not to get intimidated. Several times Katie stopped to pray for courage.

  The night before the tournament, Katie lay awake for a long time. She wished she’d brought her own pillow from home. She wished she could have brought Moe too, and most of all, Mom. Nana was wonderful, but she wasn’t Mom. Katie needed someone to tell her to stop thinking and go to sleep, that everything would be all right because God was in control. That she should just go out there and have fun, and not worry about winning. But she did worry. She wanted to win. She wanted it a lot. In fact, way too much.

  Katie slipped from her bed and prayed one final prayer. “Dear Father,” she said, “I’m sorry that I care so much about winning. I only feel that way because I want to keep the glory for myself. But the glory all goes to You. Even if I lose every game, help me to bring You glory in my thoughts and attitudes this whole time. And thank You for letting me be here.”

  Finally feeling settled, Katie crawled back into bed and went to sleep.

  The next morning, Katie found her first pairing and sat down opposite Travis, a round-faced boy with glasses. Like her, he was at the tournament for the first time. Unlike her, he didn’t seem to take the outcome very seriously. Playing quickly and carelessly, Travis lost by almost a hundred points – and seemed pleased with himself for doing as well as he did. “That’s my new high score,” he told her brightly as he signed the sheet. Katie returned a blank smile. His new high score. How nice. But what did it really matter? He lost.

  Katie’s next opponent, a private-school freak object with a mohawk, struck early with HALAKIC, lining his K up on the triple letter space. Katie faltered and fell quite far behind before recovering with PERONEAL across two doubles. He seemed to freeze up after that, and didn’t make much out of the rest of the game.

  Katie decided that her third adversary must be a bluffer. In Scrabble, you can put any combination of letters you want and get away with it, provided the other player doesn’t know enough to challenge you. A correct challenge forfeits your turn; a wrong challenge forfeits his. Sitting there with a dead expression that would have done any Poker player proud, Winnie Ruth put a few ordinary words, then plunked down NORGILEH. Katie looked at that word for a long time, comparing it against her mental record of the dictionary. There was a word like NORGILEH, she knew... but that wasn’t it. The other girl looked surprised as she said “Challenge.” An official quickly checked the dictionary and found the word incorrect.

  Undeterred – or trying reverse psychology; Katie couldn’t be sure – Winnie Ruth was at it again a few turns later. This time her “word” was PELORYA. Once again, it was similar to a real word, but just different enough to win Katie an extra turn. She won the game as well, handily. After shaking hands with her opponent, Katie said with a smile, “I know what you were doing. That first word was supposed to look like NARGILEH, the alternate spelling of NARGHILE. On the second one, I was supposed to get confused with PELORIA. Nice try.”

  “I was sure I had them right.” Winnie Ruth looked on the point of tears as she turned quickly and walked away.

  Shocked at the other girl’s sincerity, Katie was immediately sorry she’d gloated. By now she had several “followers” among the spectators, and they clucked their approval at her cleverness. But Winnie Ruth had been hurt, and all because Katie just had to presume and show off. Almost crying herself, Katie went to a private area and called Mom. “I want to come home,” she said. “I can’t help trying to get glory.”

  “You can,” Mom told her, “because Jesus will help you. Katie, coming home would be the easy way out. The right way is to go and apologize to Winnie Ruth for wrongly assuming something about her and then gloating. Then if you slip and do something like that again, apologize again. As many times as you have to. Keep asking Jesus to help you, and keep doing your best. If you want Daddy and me to be proud of you, that’s all you need to do.”

  After apologizing to the other girl, Katie spent the next game in complete silence lest she say something prideful. The crowd gathering around reminded her that this was the semifinal. If she won now, she would go to the championship game of her division. This time her opponent was Sydney, one of the oldest and highest-rated girls in the elementary section. The path to victory was long and narrow. By pure chance Katie wound up with TELEMARK, a word which Sydney confidently challenged. She knew then the game was won, and everyone else knew it too when the official announced “TELEMARK – a type of skiing turn.” Sydney soldiered on, but Katie won by a hundred and fifty points, earning outright applause from the spectators.

  Katie reached across the table and shook the other girl’s hand. “Thanks for the game,” she said.

  “Yeah, sure.” Sydney looked bemused. “How old did you say you were?”

  “I’m nine,” Katie admitted.

  “I’m eleven,” Sydney continued in puzzlement, “and I’ve been playing since kindergarten. You’re something else.”

  “God gave me a good memory,” Katie offered as humbly as she could.

  Before the final round, Katie had another talk on the phone with her parents. She was once again cross with herself. “I tried to act humble with Sydney,” she said, “but it was just acting. I felt as proud as ever.”

  “Keep saying the right things,” her mother advised, “and looking to Jesus to help you mean them.”

  The final championship round was that night, after the dinner break. Katie was tired; she never knew something as easy as Scrabble could be so exhausting. Her rival for the division trophy was Angel, an emotionless sixth-grader from a Catholic school in Memphis. She looked tired as well, Katie noted, and their skills were evenly matched. The outcome might turn on a single tile.

  After a few inconsequential plays on both sides, Katie pulled ahead with LEADWORK. Angel immediately came back with QUIRT, put in such a way that the Q scored major points two ways. Stuck with a tray full of nearly-worthless vowels, Katie threw back. Angel then played ZERO to good advantage. By the time half the tiles had been expended, her lead was beginning to look insurmountable. Some spectators started leaving after the older girl put down the valuable X in another high-scoring spot. But then Katie roared back to life with SABAYON, and followed it two turns later with the ordinary but still high-point BEAMING.

  Angel used her last tiles to put CHOICE. The word could not have been more appropriate for her opponent, who now faced a five-minute clock and a terribly difficult decision. Katie trailed by twenty-nine points. In her hand were the letters to make a word that could score her thirty points and the elementary division championship. The problem was the word itself. It was a bad word, one that would land you in the Sparrows’ Penalty Box just for vocalizing it. And yet, try as she might, she could not find another way to make the needed total and win it all. Jesus, she prayed in her mind as the time began to run low, I was hoping to learn to glorify You by winning. I hope now I can glorify You by losing. With that, Katie put down the letters in the second-best position, making an innocent word but only netting twenty-two points.

  Katie didn’t feel good as she shook Angel’s hand and congratulated her. She didn’t feel good as they presented her with the second-place divisional trophy. But she did feel clean, and she knew God was smiling. No one else would ever know what she had done.

  Or would they?

  It took the tournament watchers about ten seconds to figure out that the Rivera girl had missed a winning play on the last turn. It took them another five seconds to start asking why. Katie wasn’t even off the awards stage before a local newshound was calling out: “Hey Katie, why didn’t you put ‘_____’ in the last round? Didn’t you see it?”

  She turned to him in surprise, but responded readily. “Jesus wouldn�
�t want me to put a word like that.” As she walked away, Katie was glad she hadn’t specifically admitted that she saw the word and declined to put it. If that became known, she knew it would make Angel feel bad.

  At this point Nana guided her back to the hotel room, as the whole tournament area was now buzzing with the very word Katie had declined to play. The word got plenty of airplay in the next day’s news as well – but so did the Name of Jesus, as Katie’s off-the-cuff remark was quoted again and again. National media outlets had picked up the story within hours, and the little girl was something of a fifteen-minute celebrity.

  While losing had brought her far more fame and recognition than winning would have, Katie found herself unimpressed. These people didn’t really care about her, she knew – she was just the latest curiosity. Mom said on the phone that she shouldn’t do any interviews, and Katie heartily agreed. If Jesus had been glorified, she was happy and amazed, but she couldn’t get away from all the glitzy shallowness and back to Salem fast enough. To hear “Well done” from Mom and Dad was worth more than all that cheap renown, any day of the week.